Water treatment demonstration project at Herman Hill Park

On October 16, 2003, the Wichita Area Treatment, Education & Remediation (WATER) Center, the treatment center for the Gilbert-Mosley Project, located within the Herman-Hill Park, celebrated its grand opening.

"The Gilbert & Mosley Project is considered to be one of the most innovative public-private partnerships ever created to solve the complex environmental problem of groundwater contamination," . "This project has earned the City of Wichita national recognition for its development to avoid Superfund intervention and the impacts upon public health, environmental risks and the local economy." The State Legislature at the time forward-thinking legislation was passed to make the clean up a reality.

The facility located in Herman-Hill Park houses the equipment, a hydraulic-venturi air stripper treatment system, needed to clean the polluted groundwater, and is designed to encourage public interest and observation on how groundwater is remediated. The other half of the remediation system consists of 5.5 miles of conveyance piping and thirteen extraction wells, which extract and convey the polluted groundwater to the WATER Center treatment facility. The system is operated to limit the spread of and to remove the groundwater contamination.